There was something mischievous about his mouth. The directness of his eyes made her feel like she ought to look away. She knew that she was blushing under the feel of his eyes, which must follow hers, and the invitation of his grin.

“I wouldn’t tell on you,” she heard herself say.

He had been sitting on the steps when she left the library. That profile again and his broad shoulders. He had thrown his cigarettes away and turned to her with a book in his hands.

“Here, for you. I took it out for you. That’s not a liberty, is it? I thought that, since you were haunting the Poetry section, you might like it.”

She had turned the book in her hands. The cover design was a woven net of reeds and the gilding glinted in the sunshine.

“It’s like a cage made of leaves, isn’t it? Is it meant to be a trap to catch something?”

“I hope so. Only, I’m afraid that you’ll have to meet me here again next week, because it’s out on my library card.”

She had nodded. There was something about his smile, something about his eyes, so intently focused on her, that made it difficult to look up.

“Do I get to know your name, miss?”

“Edie.”

“And will you be here again next Saturday, Edie? Around the same time? Can I count on you for that?”

“I wouldn’t want you to incur a library fine.”

He laughed and looked away then. His eyes, which up to now had been so bold, suddenly seemed shy.

“Since I hold the future of your library privileges in my hands, am I permitted to know your name?” she had asked.

“Francis Blythe.”

He pushed his fringe off his forehead. His fingernails were all bitten down, she saw, but his hair was golden in the sunlight. He was ivory, coral, and gilt, and glimmering grin, and might well have stepped out of a painting or a poem.

“I am pleased to meet you, Francis Blythe.”

He had turned to go, but then somehow his mouth was there by her ear again and his voice is in her head. As it will always be there in her head. As it still is there at this moment. “‘I have spread my dreams under your feet,’” he whispers. So quietly. So very faintly today. “‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’” Edie looks around the café now, eight years on and a country’s distance away, and he is so near and yet so terribly far away.

“PLEASE, DO YOU recognize the buildings at all?”

Edie watches the waitress’s face, waiting for a flicker of recognition. She watches the steady side-to-side of her eyes, the silent line of her lips, her still fingers at the edges of Francis’s photograph, but then the girl is shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, madame. I don’t know it.”